Here are some of last week’s top stories from around the global soccer industry…
Infographics Changing The Way We Engage With Sports, Soccer No Exception (Business of Soccer)
Humans process images 60,000 times faster than we do words on a page (or screen as the case may be), according to Billion Dollar Graphics. Depending on which source you look at, the average person can read somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 words per minute. In a world where we deal with character limits based on the social media platform we’re using, it becomes clear how something like an “infographic” can change the way we process information.
To continue reading, please click here.
Chinese Consortium Take 13% in City Football Group (FC Business)
City Football Group, whose clubs include Manchester City, has announced a partnership with a consortium of high profile Chinese institutional investors which has seen them acquire a 13% shareholding in the group.
The deal values City Football Group (CFG), the owner of football related clubs and businesses including Manchester City FC, New York City FC, Melbourne City FC, and a minority shareholder in Yokohama F. Marinos at US$3bn.
To continue reading, please click here.
World Cup May Expand to 40 Teams by 2026, Soccer Body Says (Bloomberg)
Soccer’s World Cup may expand to 40 teams by 2026 as the sport’s global governing body looks to give more slots to African and Asian nations without blocking European and Latin American squads with some of the biggest stars.
The increase was discussed at a meeting of the group’s executive committee, which also agreed to a group of reforms to help embattled FIFA bounce back from the biggest crisis in its 111-year history. The World Cup, sport’s most-watched event, was increased to its current 32-team format for the 1998 tournament in France.
To continue reading, please click here.
La Liga Sells Two Domestic TV Packages for €2.65 Billion (Soccerex)
La Liga has sold a package of domestic media rights for the 2016/17 to 2018/19 cycle to Telefonica and Mediapro for a combined €2.65 billion (US$2.8 billion).
Telefonica, which snapped up the first batch of collectivised rights for the top tier of Spanish soccer for this current season, has signed a deal worth €250 million (US$264.5 million) per season over the next three-year cycle.
To continue reading, please click here.
South American Soccer Bosses Charged in Latest FIFA Graft Probe (Reuters)
Soccer bosses from across South and Central America were among 16 people charged on Thursday with multimillion-dollar bribery schemes for marketing and broadcast rights, in a dismantling of a Latin American soccer network by U.S. prosecutors.
Court documents showed that the heads of the CONMEBOL and CONCACAF associations that run soccer in the Western Hemisphere and others with top jobs in the world governing body FIFA were charged along with current and former chiefs of the Brazil Football Confederation (CBF), which hosted the 2014 World Cup finals.
To continue reading, please click here.
MLS Backs David Beckham’s Stadium Plan for Miami’s Overtown District (the guardian)
Major League Soccer has given its backing to David Beckham’s proposed stadium site for his planned expansion team in Miami.
The news follows Beckham’s team of investors acquiring land in Miami’s Overtown neighbourhood after more than a year searching for a viable home for the team – with three previous plans coming to nothing.
To continue reading, please click here.
Major League Soccer Eyes Further Expansion to 28 Teams in Future (ESPN FC)
Expansion was on the mind of Major League Soccer owners at Saturday’s Board of Governors meeting.
MLS owners announced support for expansion to 28 teams, with the process and timeline will be unveiled at a later date.
The league’s current expansion plans call for 24 teams by 2020, with Atlanta, Los Angeles and Minnesota joining in the next three years and Miami taking a step to becoming the 24th team.
To continue reading, please click here.
Report: UEFA Document Outlines Platini Payment (Goal.com)
Michel Platini’s legal team believe a UEFA document shows “nothing was hidden” in the alleged payment that led to his FIFA suspension.
The alleged “disloyal payment” made by FIFA to Michel Platini that resulted in the UEFA president and FIFA chief Sepp Blatter being suspended was detailed in a 1998 UEFA Executive Committee report, according to reports by French newspaper Journal du Dimanche.
To continue reading, please click here.
MLS at 20: How Football in the USA is Thriving At Last (BBC)
Everybody works for the same company, you can never leave no matter how bad you are, you spend eight months deciding who wins only to play for two more months to decide somebody else has won and you do all this while every other player in the northern hemisphere is on the beach.
“It is the most intriguing, head-scratching league in world football,” admitted Major League Soccer commissioner Don Garber when I pointed out that his league is a bit… well, different.
To continue reading, please click here.
How China Hopes Soccer Academies and Boardroom Deals Can Help it Land the World Cup (South China Morning Post)
Wang Shijie, 11, is a rising star among the nearly 3,000 students at Guangzhou Evergrande’s huge soccer academy in south China. He wants to join the national team and help achieve President Xi Jinping’s dream of winning the World Cup.
In schools like this around the country, China is training an army of young players it hopes will help the nation shake off its lowly place in the world’s football ladder: 84th out of 209 countries.
To continue reading, please click here.
This article originally appeared on Business of Soccer. To learn more about BOS you can follow them on Facebook or Twitter.
